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UNCC LRC Language Placement Test: Web-CAPE Online Placement Exam Step-by-Step

2011/06/08 1 comment
  1. “The Online Placement Exam is designed to help you determine the first course you should take, based on your ability. This multiple-choice [no speaking, listening or writing required] exam presents questions of different ability levels, adapting the next question’s level according to your answers.  The number of questions you will be required to complete depends upon your ability to use the language. The duration of the test varies, but it usually takes 15-20 minutes to complete [but can be finished after only 4 questions, and we will give you up to an hour time to complete the exam]”.
  2. The proctored exam takes place in the LRC (COED434). The exam schedule is published in the LRC COED434 calendar. Read more on how to view the LRC calendar from within the new NINERMAIL.
  3. When taking the exam during the proctored session in the language center [do not take the exam on your own], to sign up for the test, you have to go to: https://www.aetip.com/student/RegisterStudent.cfm (note: the “s” behind “http” is required), this now forwards to:https://www.perpetualworks.com/secure/register/student/, for which sthe shortcut is: http://goo.gl/PBjhhS:
  4. signup
  5. First chose UNCC (Avoid the common error of choosing another University of the UNC system, you will not be able to take the test if you do):
  6. signup-uni
  7. Then choose your language – note that UNCC only allows testing in French, German and Spanish.
  8. signup-language
  9. Fill out the other form fields with your information.
  10. Finally, you need one of these credit cards, and the proper billing info, to take the  test:
  11. signup-credit
  12. Next, you will have to enter your NINERNET student id number.
  13. The exam results will eventually go to your file. However, they will have to be post-processed by the department. Do not take the exam without coordinating with the Department of Language and Culture Studies, or else your exam results will get lost!
  14. Remember that you can repeat the placement test, even though the number of retries per languages is limited to two (your score will get invalidated after that!).
  15. Remember also that is not advisable to study for (let alone cheat during) a placement exam,  or  else you will get placed into a course that is not right for you.
Categories: e-languages, French, German, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, step-by-step-guides, websites Tags: , , , ,

Protected: How to conduct an easy oral exam with Sanako1200 (Model imitation/Question Response) – Part II: Implementation/instruction of examined students

2011/05/04 Enter your password to view comments.

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Categories: all-languages, Arabic, assessments, audience-is-teachers, classroom-management-system, e-languages, English, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Institution-is-Aston-University, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, learning-materials, learning-usage-samples, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, Polish, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers, Swahili, Videos, Yoruba Tags: , , ,

Foreign Language Character Input on Windows XP in the LRC

2011/04/14 1 comment

The LRC offers the following foreign language characters writing support:

American English us international not needed us-int
Arabic Google;MS;MS-maren;fontboard maybe later, now osk demo
British English us international not needed us-int
Dutch us international not needed us-int
Farsi Google;MS maybe later, now osk demo
French us international not needed us-int
German us international not needed us-int
Greek Google;MS maybe later, now osk demo
Italian us international not needed us-int
Japanese MS not needed
Korean MS maybe later, now osk demo
Mandarin MS;pinyinput not needed pinyin
Portuguese (Brazilian) us international not needed us-int
Russian Google;MS maybe later, now osk demo
Spanish us international not needed us-int

The support is best accessed from the “international toolbar”, like so: lrc-international-keyboards-cropped

You can also use the windows on-screen keyboard to input non-Western characters on a computer that has not the corresponding keyboard overlay stickers. In the small-group workspaces, which have writing pads, you can also use the MS-Handwriting IME for East-Asian languages.

Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-languages, Farsi, French, German, Greek (ancient), Greek (modern), Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Screencasts, small-group-work-spaces, Spanish, Student-Computers, Writing Tags: , , , ,

How to: Send email with non-western (e.g. Japanese) characters in Outlook Web Access (e.g. 2003, e.g. from Safari)

2011/04/01 Leave a comment
  1. If your emails with Japanese sent from Safari arrive with unreadable characters (squares or question marks, meaning the recipient’s computer cannot decode how to display the character your computer sent), you may have set your browser to the wrong characterr encoding.
  2. However, the encoding Unicode (e.g. UTF-8) can handle both western and .
  3. Simply go to Safari (similarly in other browsers)/ Preferences / Appearances / Default Encoding and change to UTF-8, like so:
  4. charinput-japanese-outlook-owa-2003-utf8-sender1
  5. charinput-japanese-outlook-owa-2003-utf8-sender2
  6. charinput-japanese-outlook-owa-2003-utf8-sender3
  7. This has been tested to work already from/to OWA 2003.
  8. charinput-japanese-outlook-owa-2003-utf8-recipient4
  9. However, for your reference, here a matrix of imminent upgrades of email clients on your computer and the corresponding university server software:

When?

Your office computer

recommended?

Any computer (travel, home)

University server

mac

pc

 

soon

Outlook 2011

Outlook 2010

is better than

Outlook web access 2010

Exchange 2010

recommended?

is better than

is better than

 

is better than

is better than

now

Entourage (limited support for Exchange)

Outlook 2007

is better than

Outlook web access 2003

Exchange 2003
Categories: Arabic, e-infrastructure, Farsi, Glitches&Errors, Greek (modern), Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian

Chinese: Character Input: Stroke order: How to learn

2011/02/21 1 comment

Chinese characters are written in a stroke order (which differs for traditional, simplified, and Kanji). This convention is useful for memorizing characters, but also aids handwriting recognition software, and can be used for looking up Chinese characters.

Some free tools that aid in learning stroke order during SLA:

The tool I remember from supporting my first Chinese program a long time ago in Iowa where also Ted Yao’s Integrated Chinese (Cheng & Tsui) was used, is the Bihua project which lets you search by number of strokes, and displays stroke order animation in the results by means of QuickTime videos. Note that links to the corresponding chapters of Integrated Chinese are included in the results:

`bihua-mandarin-stroke-order-integrated-chinese

http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/azi/page1.htm has  animated GIFs to teach the stroke order.

 http://lost-theory.org/ocrat/chargif/ is also based on animated gif, but the animation is a bit easier to follow since the current stroke gets highlighted, and you can search for characters.

There is some more animated gif material as overview in wikimedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CJK_stroke_order

 

If you teach simplified, this Taiwanese education ministry website will be of no use to you: http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/home.do , but maybe the Hong Kong version for primary education is of use for your students, esp since it is partially in bilingual English: http://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/index.htm

Practice memorization with Google pinyin IME which allows you to look up characters by strokes:  “This allows you to input Chinese characters not only by using pinyin but also by using strokes if you do not know how a character is pronounced. First, press “u” to enter the stroke mode. Then use “h” for heng, the horizontal stroke, “s” for shu, the vertical stroke, “p” for pie, the left falling stroke, “n” for na, right falling stroke, “z” for zhe, the turning stroke, and “d” for dian, the dot, to input a Chinese character according to its stroke order. Among these strokes, “n” and “d” are the interchangeable. For example, if you want to input 火, then you press “u” first, and then press “dppn” or “ nppn.” A character often appears before you finish keying in all the strokes. For examples, 煅 appears when you key in “udppdps” without the need to input all the strokes.”

 

Some non-free tools include the  Chinese Character Stroke Order Animator and eStroke (singe license expensive, price comes down to about $35 per seat for a 30 seat site license which may be a good size for a language center)

Animated Gifs and other video-based teaching tools may be a bit to non-interactive, and also too fast (but could be slowed down). Even better would be a pen- or touch-enabled software that allows the learner to practice the stroke, following guiding lines. Unfortunately, pocketChinese which would fit the bill ((on Java enabled phones) seems to not have been updated  in almost 3 years.

Categories: e-languages, Mandarin Tags: , ,

Character Input for SLA (Mandarin)

2009/09/04 Leave a comment

·        Input for east Asian languages can use

o   so called IMEs (Input Method Editors) which allow you to type Roman characters and receive in return a dialogue with

o   Handwriting recognition (not very usable with only a mouse as drawing devices.

o   How to easily type pinyin with tone markers

§  Use the Pinyininput IME from the Language Bar (or Input Method  Selector keyboard shortcut).

§  Its “first mode is “checked” mode, which only accepts (mostly) valid pīnyīn (mostly valid in that it only checks for correct combinations of initials and finals, and not valid/invalid combinations of tones). When typing, if you place a number at the end of a pīnyīn syllable then Pinyinput will automatically convert the correct vowel in the syllable so that it has the appropriate tone e.g. Typing Ni3hao3 will produce the output Nǐhǎo. (…() “Checked” mode also optionally supports “érhuà” so things like pingr2 will be converted to píngr. The “érhuà” support is pretty simplistic, and it will allow any valid pīnyīn syllable which is followed by an r (even though such syllables might not exist in valid pinyin). (…)

§  The second mode is “unchecked” mode, and in this mode you can type whatever you like

§  (…) the user can optionally decide whether they want to use combining diacritic marks or individual characters [which] are probably the best way to go, as not all programs handle combining diacriticals correctly. (…)

§  Pinyinput can support multiple different keyboard layouts.(…)  regardless of the layout used, the letter v of that layout is always automatically converted to ü.

View a demonstration screencast.

·        Simplified Chinese

o   Select the pre-installed IME from the Language Bar (or Input Method  Selector keyboard shortcut).

·        More Information is available here; Foreign_Language_Character_Input.pdf

o   The LLC attempts to have the optimum environment language for learning preinstalled. Suggestions for additions welcome.

Categories: Documents, e-learning, Mandarin, Screencasts, Writing Tags: , , ,